Yes, Jim, and "tamouse", Apologies for the length of this response. I am asking for help organizing the rewrite of the site, from a LOT of HTMLs that have 90% in common, containing a couple of php links to do a php mail form and command, and an article... to a "template-article-footer" format. I am having a problem visualizing how I need to proceed (from the highest level), so I was asking for opinions on how to organize the index.php plus template.php plus home.article design... at the highest level. >From the sounds of it ( I didn't bother to un-zip his file) it appears that > he just wants to create a model template and fill in the center (the > 'article'?) appropriately depending upon the user's request That is basically the project. I have used Joomla for sites like this before, but the business owner is not tech-savvy (not a power-user) in the least. Setting up Joomla for her site, teaching her how to navigate Joomla to modify articles, and giving her the access to the articles that she wants access to is WAY beyond what she is capable of and REALLY overkill for this small website. Besides, she could destroy the whole site as Joomla admin or a Joomla user very easily. She wants access to some of the articles, ONLY to change the wording of some articles (the article on the about page and the home page, and maybe a "specials" page yet to be designed) but I am trying not to giving her the ability to destroy the whole site because she has access to. I want to place .article files in a folder, and let her work on the articles. I can build a default article into the PHP if the document that she edits gets deleted. Yet she's a smart business owner... "if i have access to the articles to change them and I mess up, I don't want the website to disappear" was how she expressed it to me. The other wrinkle (at a programming level) is that she wants a header in every email that the website sends to the company, to track which link was clicked. I'm thinking that (as an example of the changes that I need to make to the files contained in the zip )-- I. index.html would "require" index.php. 1) index.php would define variables for that page, i.e. a var building="index" or "about" or "services" or "products", and then include "template.php", a home.article file, and a footer.php . 2) template.php would use the "building" value to build each custom header and left column and right column. Within the header, it would use the variable "building" to send a label that identifies "building" and another value "header" to "contact.php" (see more about "contact.php" later). Programatically, template.php will highlight tab buttons at the top of the page (if they need to be highlighted) and menu buttons in left column (if they need to be highlighted) dependent on the value of "building", and in column 2 choose the correct list of buttons to display in a vendor list dependent on the value of "building". 3) footer.php would use the "building" value to build each custom footer for the page. Within the footer, it would use the variable "building" to send a label that identifies "building" and another value "footer" to "contact.php" (see more about "contact.php" later). II. contact.php will bring up an email form, use the label passed in to create a custom header to insert into the php mail command/function. III/IV/V/VI. Each HTML in the site will have an associated php that calls template, grabs any appropriate .article file, calls footer. Does that structure make sense? Are there gotchas, things to "verify" and "watch out for" that you have run into doing similar projects? As a past for this design procedure, I worked on a "sales agent" site years ago that did a similar "build each page dependent on logged.in.user" ... but the control for this project is not logged.in.user in this project... the control is page.being.built . Thank you for the input, and any links to online articles that I should probably read, or topics that I should make sure I understand completely in php. Peace, -- Barry Smith c 704-497-4217 e scs.bns001@xxxxxxxxx
